Why I am developing a hate-on for Penguin House

I don't like Penguin Random House.

In case you don't know, Penguin, who is a big name publisher of everything, and Random House, who is also a big name publisher of everything, merged last year. I blogged about it.

And then I found out that Penguin's parent company bought Author Solutions not too long before the merger, and has done fuck-all to clean it up as a company. And then they started using Author Solutions to have the other big name companies (Harlequin, Simon and Schuster, couple others) start yet another Author Solutions front, only with the big name company's name as the hat. I blogged about how STUPID that is here.

But up until today I didn't have a good reason not to like Random House. Because...they weren't really talking, I guess. Welp, let's take care of that.

And in case you want the teal deer version, that link states that Random House now has an e-book only division, and that they offer you a lot of nice shiny objects like editors and artists and training in using social media tools, and they don't mind if your work is short or if it has been published before. Basically, this is a bright and shinier version of KDP, Amazon's self publishing arm.

The difference? Amazon expects you to do most of the work yourself, they take a set percentage of fees (65% in one price bracket, 30% in the other) they don't market your book for shit unless it's incredibly popular (nor should they be expected to) they're not back-charging their expenses by taking their costs out of YOUR cut, and oh, yeah, THEIR CONTRACT ISN'T FOR LIFE OF COPYRIGHT.

LIFE. OF. COPYRIGHT.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.

Alright. To explain why that is the most MIND NUMBLY AWFUL thing I have read today INCLUDING the book I'm reviewing? Copyright is the thing that you sell to a publisher. It's not the actual book, it's just the right to print it for a set time. Most contracts are for X number of years OR for however long it takes for the book to run out of print, whichever is faster. Ebooks and POD (Print on demand) publishing made the game really complicated because technically the book is never out of print, which is why most good contracts these days are for X number of years plus a revision clause (usually if the book doesn't sell Y number of copies, you get the rights back and you can take it elsewhere. There ought to be another "in case of bankruptcy" clause as well, but that doesn't always hold up in bankruptcy court.).

Life of copyright, however, is exactly that. You sign a contract with Hydra-Random House (which you should not be dumb enough to do ever without serious, SERIOUS revisions, which if I'm reading this right would basically amount to them rewriting the entire contract), your book has to STAY at Hydra-Random House. Period. If an issue comes up with them that you don't like? Sucks to be you, your book is theirs for your lifetime plus another 70 years.

This is why research is important, and why you need to treat your writing like a business and not a dream. Five years ago if I had sent my stuff in to Hydra and gotten accepted, I would have signed that contract in a second and I would have been SCREWED. That is a bad contract. That is a very bad contract.

The more I pay attention to the publishing world, the happier I am with self publishing. Yes, I don't have big advances or a huge audience, but I don't have to deal with this shit, either. And that sucks because trade publishing is still something I believe in. Books that are trade published are better than books that aren't. But for FUCK'S SAKE, this is the kind of bullshit little bitty baby publishers get dogpiled for. This is NOT what a big publisher should be doing.

Then again, these are the people who are letting Author Solutions continue to be the suckiest mistake in the history of suck. Maybe "not dicking authors around" is a little too much to expect.

And yes, folks. I really do get that Penguin House needs to compete with Amazon because Amazon is on the verge of owning all the things. But the reason why Amazon's KDP program is coming out on top of the great self publishing competition is that it's one third of the best option (the other two-thirds being Pubit and Smashwords). And also? As a self publisher myself? I'm really offended that Random House/Penguin/Hydra/Pearson Group thinks that I've got an IQ low enough to settle for a life of copyright rights grab buried under the thin veneer of "real" publication.

Caress of Twilight--chapter 7

It is time for LKH to have her main character meet new people. Anybody remember how hard it was for Anita Blake to get into Narcissus in Chains armed? Well, I hope you found that scene to be fucking riveting because we're about to get a replay. 

Remember: Merry is here to meet with Maeve Reed . The chapter opens with a description of Ethan Kane, a character who is manifestedly not Maeve Reed, who is one of her psychic bodyguards/PIs. Why would she hire more PIs when she already has Merry's major competition on retainer?

We will find out. And we will not be happy.

Ethan attempts to be imposing to the Fae men, who pretty much define imposing for the sake of this story. Although I do have to ask...how imposing is Christmas tinsel hair? Several members of my household watch WWE wrestling regularly (...my primary writing place is on the couch in front of the TV, and Mondays are my only real day off. So yes. I usually wind up watching the first and last thirty minutes. The other two hours though, I usually wind up playing Minecraft until a Creeper blows up my house), and the big thing for the past month has been watching the Rock call Paul Haymen "Twinkie Tits" and C.M. Punk "Cookie Puss". So kids? If your descriptions of your Bishe men makes me think of the Rock's kindergarten (if admittedly clever-ish) TV safe insults? YOU FAIL.

(For the record, I'd rather be watching Sherlock, but the roomies get the TV on Mondays. My retaliation has been episodes of Sherlock)

And my attempts at imagining this scene:

He frowned down at us from just outside Maeve Reed’s large double doors. We were all standing at the foot of the marble steps that led up to those doors.

Has me giggling madly. I see this huge, sweeping front staircase, with Merry and Co at the bottom and this dude in little dark glasses and a pressed suit staring down at them with his arms folded. Nobody's saying anything. They're just kind of standing there. And there are four other people standing between them and the door.

This is hilarious.

And then they start talking.

I'm going to be real honest with you guys. Dialogue is not LKH's strong suit. Dialogue exists to develop characters and convey information you would not normally get. Screaming is perfectly acceptable dialogue. Repeating very fucking obvious shit that you already covered in previous paragraphs? THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.

Ethan asks Merry what she's doing there. She says that Maeve Reed invited her. She asks what he's doing here. He says he's Maeve's bodyguards.

Right.

I really hope Merry didn't pay a lot for that PI badge of hers. (...and suddenly I'm hearing Joe Pecci saying "They fuck you they fuck you they fuck you with the cell phones" and I realize they both got their badges from the same place)

Merry says in her internal monologue that she is about to be blunt. Then she spends the next several paragraphs describing everything except what she should actually be doing, which is getting into Maeve's House so the plot can actually exist. 

"Blunt", Merry, is when you actually say the thing you're intending to say in as few words as possible.

...Oh, hey, what's Kitto doing?

He looked oddly out of place in his short-shorts, tank top, and child-size Nikes.

NO.

He’d put on black wraparound sunglasses, but aside from that he could have passed for someone’s nephew,

 

the kind that usually isn’t a nephew at all but a boy toy.

GOOD FUCKING GOD.  WHY? WHY WOULD YOU WRITE THIS? WHY WOULD ANY HUMAN BEING COMPARE A CHARACTER THEIR MAIN CHARACTER IS FUCKING TO A VICTIM OF MOLESTATION AND TRAFFICKING?  


Jesus. Jesus Christ. I need to go take medication for this.

Okay. I'm better now.

Merry's form of bluntness is to tell Ethan why he's being a dick--he is worried that Merry and the boys are about to replace him. Merry, I would not want to be within six feet of me with a gun becasue I would not be confident that she wouldn't have a sob attack or decide to get passive aggressive about getting a raise ("...yes I know your stalker killed your cat, but I am allergic to cats. Now give me a two thousand dollar raise so I can afford medication for my allergy to people")(Also: Not saying girls can't guard. I am saying that Merry shouldn't guard) but if I were Fae and the Queen of Crazy's royal guards were suddenly on the market? Fuck yes I'd hire them.

But Merry is quick to assure Ethan that Maeve wants to see her, and only her, and I guess it is that obvious that Merry should never preform guard duty for anything, ever, because Ethan backs right the fuck down.

Hey, how respectful of Merry's person are her boyfriends?

“I can be very nice if people give me the chance, Ethan.” 

Max spoke low so that Ethan couldn’t hear him. “And how nice can you be?”

 Rhys answered, voice low, “Very, very nice.” 

The two of them shared one of those masculine laughs that women never seem to be able to participate in, but are always the subject of.

That's the most sexist thing I've read this year. There are layers of suck in that tiny paragraph. First of all, there's the fact that Merry's fucking bodyguards just told somebody they don't know from fuck all about how good Merry is in the sack. For all they know this dude could have a Merry Gentry shrine in his bedroom (Because remember, kids, Merry is more famous than Elvis) Second, there is how this passage doesn't demonize this at all. It's a comment on Merry's sexual prowness, not an example of what kind of men Merry surrounds herself with. It's trying to tell you how awesome she is. And thirdly, it implies that all men are like that. It takes the whole thing out of the relm of character development and shoves it into the land of gender typecasting. It's not people doing this, folks, it's men. it's not Merry being left out of the conversation re: her ladyparts. Nope. It's women. Here's the age-old divide that LKH swears she's trying to mend, and here's the shovel she's using to make the canyon just a little bit wider.

And I know that some guys do have this conversation, just as some women have it. They're assholes reguardless of gender. But even if we did have that conversation, most of us are smart enough to have it when the object of our genetalia's affection ISN'T FUCKING STANDING RIGHT IN EARSHOT.

And he's doing it in front of her competition. You know how Merry was going on about respect? This is a sign they don't respect her at all. Not that they don't obey her orders, or Rhys's freaking out over man-child goblin sex. It's the fact that Rhys is airing out her dirty laundry not just in public but in a business setting. And Merry doesn't turn around and reprimand him for it.

Gang, the basis for respect is healthy bounderies. If you establish and mantain them, people respect you. If you prove that you're willing to violate both yours and other people's? People lose respect for you. If you are willing to let your employees gab about your personal information? Eventually they're going to start taking cash out of the till. Merry has no bounderies, and neither does anyone else in this god-awful book.

And then we start playing the "We're not letting you in with your guns" part of the "LKH's Main Character meets new people" game. Jesus Christ, you'd think she'd come up with a new way to do this after twenty fucking books.

Anita solved this by talking in circles for hours. Merry solves it by shouting "Maeve Reed, Maeve Reed, come out to play!" at the top of her lungs until Maeve shows up.

I liked it better when Patrick Swayze did it:



Finally Maeve's secretary comes out and asks them to come in. Ethan insists on releaving Merry of her guns, it takes ten minutes for Maeve to threaten to fire Ethan and for Merry to step through the house's front door.

End of chapter.

What the shit? BAD JERRY. BAD.

MOST of you probably know I have big issues with the Left Behind series.

Mostly because Jerry B. Jenkins, the dude who did most of the writing, managed to write the worst Christian series in the history of Christian things. And I don't mean bad writing, though that's there. I mean he wrote Christian characters that make Anita Blake look like fucking Ghandi in terms of humanitarianism. Also: HOW DO YOU FUCK UP THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST? Because they did. Oh GOD did they ever.

And then they wrote a sequel that was about Celestial Kingdom Day Care. NOT KIDDING. It was horrible.

So what set me off, and has me writing two long rambly posts in the space of thirty minutes instead of doing book reviews like I ought to? This:

http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2013/02/christian-writers-guild-publishing-pay.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AtLastWriterBewareBlogsAcCrispinAndVictoriaStraussRevealAll+%28Writer+Beware+Blogs!%29

First of all, if you are a writer and you do not subscribe to Writer Beware you need to go fix that right away. Second, if you do not go read that article (AND YOU SHOULD) let me point out two salient facts:

one: the carrot on the end of this shit-stick is the promise that you are going to be taught/mentored by a real published author. 

Kids, I count as published.

Two: They do not provide anything that you cannot get for cheap elsewhere. If you want mentoring by real published authors, go to the Absolute Write Water Cooler, hang around until you get access to the Share Your Work forum (It takes about ten posts IIRC) and you'll get help from people like John Macdonald and Stacia Kane. For free. Editing from package deals is notorious for sucking, because these guys make their money by quantity, not quality. And they do not provide the two most important things to any writer, ever, Marketing and Distribution.

Three: YOU ARE PAYING TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR THIS.

Folks, I've held off on going on a self publishing rant for a while, but seeing a so-called Champion (Gag me) of my faith pull this shit? Yeah. We're done.

Don't sign with this thing.

Don't sign with Author Solutions, iUniverse, Xlibris, Harlequin's romance Self pub arm, or about ten other companies because they are ALL Author Solutions IRL, and Author Solutions sucks.

Don't sign any contract that asks you for a year's commitment to the company if you are paying them money for the privilege of seeing your book in print. IT WILL NOT BE WORTH IT.

Don't sign for a "package" that contains editing and a book cover and mentions lots of swag and press announcements but doesn't say anything about distribution. IT WILL NOT BE WORTH IT.

And if you DO want to self publish your books:
-Try to get professionally AKA "Trade" published first. It will teach you how to polish your work if nothing else
-Go to Deviantart.com. Find somebody whose work you like whose commission prices you can afford. Commission them to do your cover. It'll be better than what a package offers AND their fans might read your book just because
-Either edit using beta readers or hire somebody who has edited books THAT HAVE SOLD WELL. Contact authors they edited for and find out how many of their edits actually got used.
-Use KDP to get your ebooks on Amazon.com. It's free.
-Use Pubit to get your books on Barnes and Noble.com. It's also free
-Use Smashwords to get everywhere else. It's also free and you don't have to screw around with Apple/itunes
-Find or hire a typesetter to do the PDF for your print book, if you go that route.
-Look at Createspace.com and Lulu.com and decide which one you like better. Print through that one.
-Investigate Lighteningsource as a possible printer/distributor as well, as they DO have access to the brick-and-morter stores. Real bookstores probably won't carry your books, but Lightening Source, FAIK, also does hardback books.

You can probably do all this on a budget of 1500$ or less. MUCH less if you can do any of it yourself. AND THAT IS ALL MUCH MUCH MUCH LESS THAN TEN FUCKING THOUSAND FUCKING DOLLARS.

I tried to maintain respect for JBJ because he's an elder and a member of my faith and he's sold more books than I ever will, but I don't remember Christ saying "Do unto others, but bleed them dry first, because hey, there's a lot of money in this self-publishing thing". This is a cash grab, and possibly THE most overpriced cash grab I have seen JBJ do, and that INCLUDES the Celestial Day Care...thing.

Fuck you, Jerry. Fuck you.

Narcissus in Chains--chapter 13

There are a handful of things that make me go up in flames. This is one of them. I do not promise that ANY of today's post will be fun.

The torturous thing about recovering with rape is, you're never sure that rape's what it actually is. The human brain is wired to assume responsibility for the events that happen in its lifetime. This is because we can only change our own behavior. If it is our fault we were struck by a parent, well, we can change our behavior to avoid being struck in the future. Alternatively, if we go to jail, we can change our behavior to avoid going to jail in the future. The problem with this is one, it lets us off the hook and two, we do it socially. I have ranted many, many, many times on how monster movies=victim blaming, and I'm probably going to do it again. But what happens next is so fucking textbook it...me...I...

Let's just get this over with.

Nathanial is driving Anita and Jean Claude home. She starts shaking in his arms. Hard. Again: This is not the way you react to normal sex, and given the number of times she's been scratched by shapeshifters and shrugged it off, this is not the way she reacts to getting nicked by a kitty cat. Jean Claude tells her it's okay, she's safe. She decides that she has to tell him what's happened in the last few days:

“I had sex with Micah.”

“I had sex with Micah.”

“I had sex with Micah.”

“I had sex with Micah.”

No. The fact is, Anita baby, you spent the entire sexual encounter stiff as a board, telling the son of a bitch "No, don't, stop," Coming up with excuse after excuse and remaining numb and frozen both physically and emotionally the entire time. You only got "into it" because he knew enough about female anatomy to stimulate you into orgasm. And given what Jean Claude is about to explain, I think we could argue that even that part is bullshit and happened without your consent. You did not have sex with Micah. You were raped by Micah. And now you're blaming yourself because that's what strong people do.

Now. It's time for Jean Claude to explain everything I just said, tell her that it's okay, and have Nathanial turn the car back around so she can repeat this all to the cops and they can go gear up and fry Micah's ass. Right?

“You are like a vampire newly risen. Even those of us who will be masters cannot fight our hunger the first night, or the first few nights. It is overwhelming. It is why many vampires feed on their nearest kin when they first rise. It is who they are thinking of in their hearts, and they are drawn to them. It is only with the aid of a master vampire that the hunger can be directed elsewhere.” 

“You’re not angry?” I asked. 

He laughed and hugged me. “I thought you would be angry with me for giving you the ardeur, the fire, the burning hunger.”

Preferably Mercy Thompson. She was raped "consensually" too, and she killed her rapist with a tire iron.

First of all, Anita doesn't have the emotional capacity to deal with the ardeur (more on that later) because she's been fucking raped by a fucking stranger who gave her a fucking orgasm in the process. Also by you, Mr. Self Indulgance, immediately before that. But let's say for a moment that she had actually said yes at some point in that horrible mess. You're implying the ONLY reason she would have done so was because of the ardeur, something you gave her without her concent. So this woman who previously was willing to wait until she and Richard got hitched to have sex has just been turned into something who can feed off sex BY YOU, and is very, very, VERY clearly freaked out as all hell about it. She's not feeling guilty, you asshole. I've seen Anita feeling guilty. She gets very weepy, turns into a drama queen, and then goes out and kills something. This is Anita being fucking broken. In short:

Moving on.

Jean Claude explains that for the next few weeks, Anita will probably want to jump every single male she's ever had feelings for, ever.

Jean Claude promises to help her through it.

...I'm going to hate every single chapter after this, aren't I?

Reguardless, they pull up to the Circus of the Damned. *sporfle* and everybody piles out of the car. She runs into Jason, who says that there's a bed Anita can sleep in, that it isn't used much, and when it is used it is by women who want to sleep with "Jean Claude's pet werewolf." who is Jason.

....

And then he tells her the only reason she "hates the monsters" (Vampires, werewolves, ect) is because they are "different".

You know what I miss from the Mercyverse the most? The people who are normal. We had a werewolf who was a doctor, a vampire who was nuts about Scooby Doo, scary strong faerie who doubled as kindergarden teachers and bankers, and I think my favorite was the gay werewolf cowboy. (Warren. Warren wins all the things) There was always an undercurrent of "I don't want to fuck your life up" whenever Mercy had to ask someone for a favor, or vice versa.Sure, there were some interactions that were fucked up, but there were also quite a few that were normal, every day things that never went any further than that.

Why do I bring this up?

We have not had one interaction with the supernatural in this book that has not gone fucking sideways. Richard has gone batshit and is threatening to kill someone for reasons nobody understands, Jean Claude mind raped Anita, Narcissus is David Parker Ray in a dress, and a strange wereleopard just raped Anita in the shower. In the Mercyverse, I'd buy that arguement because...well, it passes as logical. Some of the supers were just people trying to get along, and most of the wolves were people who had been savagely attacked by another wolf, who did not want to be wolves, who wanted nothing to do with being a wolf, and who were re-learning how to live their massively changed life in a framework that made that life safe for them and other people. (Which is why the packs wouldn't tolerate lone wolves unless said lone wolf paid the local Alpha a visit, and I need to get back to Anita, don't I?)

In the Anitaverse? The monsters are moral monsters. Want to bang everyone? You're posessed by a demon. Want to kill someone? It's justifiable because of x bullshit rule. Someone else's Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness? Secondary to our bullshit pack dynamic politics. NOBODY on the preternatural side of the fence is a good person. Anita doesn't (or didn't) hunt the monsters because they were "different". She hunted the monsters because the monsters were doing bad things on a consistant basis. And up until this book, she still had the moral high ground. Some of the monsters, like Dead Dave the bartender and Richard the werewolf teacher, were alright. Some, like Jean Claude, were scary bad but could be tolerated as a better option, and the great majority (Nikolaus, the would-be Mayan god from Obsidian Butterfly, the idiots behind Rawhead Bloody Bones, the former Alpha of Richard's Pack) were marked for death, which they eventually got one way or another. Not because they were monsters, but because they were murderers.

So no, Jace. No, Anita. No, Laurell. You don't get a pass on this one.

Then we get mired down in pack politics again. Bullshit pack politics, because there's no way Richard would have held onto the pack this long if he were so weak, Anita threatening to kill another member undermines his authority. You don't keep the pack by talking. You keep the pack by fighting, and people don't challenge you if they don't want to die. Under those circumstances, it doesn't matter if it's a democratsy or what. Has Richard been badly hurt lately? No? Then Jacob shouldn't have a prayer.

The chapter ends with Jason saying "Nobody's better at dirty work than you are, Anita" and Anita wandering off being all hurt about this.

Next chapter: Absolutely nothing happens.

Narcissus in Chains--Chapter 12

Edit 12/18/12--this page was part of a massive cluster fuck on my part. To see how I reacted to the cluster fuck, visit this page

So Nathanial drives Anita home after the mess with Micah. Nobody's talking. He's not playing music, which he usually likes to do, and Anita is focusing on her guns and weapons, and finding out that Nathanial is the one that put her gun in her robe pocket back at the club.

And then this happens:

“How are you doing?” His voice was very careful when he asked it, quiet in the rushing silence of the car. 

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

 “Okay.”

I think this is supposed to be about her potential lycanthropy. But lycanthropy hasn't been mentioned in a chapter, and she was just fucking raped in the shower by a total stranger. So it sounds as if they're talking about that.

Anita goes to the police department to prove she isn't dead. This ought to be an easy task. Show up, flash ID, say hi to your buddies, arrange for your undead mind-raping lover to be picked up (preferably by a body disposal service, but Anita isn't that smart) and then tell the police that a friend of yours has been kidnapped and held hostage for ransom. Seriously. Fuck the dominance shit, get these idiots into the habit of calling the cops, everyone's lives will be a whole lot better.

Does it work out this way? Well...

First she re-introduces herself to the leader of RPIT, an acronym I do not want to explain right now (read as preternatural cops and leave it at that) who is all like, "Did you die?" which is apparently a good question to ask of someone who raises the dead for a living. And it is a pretty good question, seeing as how the bad guy in the first book was a necromancer who had come back to life and had to do some pretty gnarly things to stay that way. Ah, the days when Anita and her boy-toy refused to sleep together until they were married. Back to the point, undead Anita could probably cause almost as much damage as still-living Anita, with the added cool points of being a Zombie. After verbally reassuring a cop who, for some reason, doesn't ask to  verify Anita's current posistion as the current president of the Being Alive Club (/Awesome GlaDOS), Anita wanders into the station and everybody freaks out.

Also, the plot breaks. It's a minor break, and I'm sure we can fix it with tape.

See, Anita's been unconsious for four days, and the boys in blue have been holding Jean Claude in prison all that time. One, this breaks the universe because if the cops can keep Jean Claude in jail any leingth of time they damn well ought to have guns that could knock him out, too. Anyway, they're basing holding Jean Claude for "questioning" on a few photographs of Anita covered in blood.

Anita has been seen covered in blood since the first book. Some of it is usually hers. Most of it is usually someone else's. The police have frequently gone with her on trips that leave her covered in someone else's blood. Ergo no police officer who knows Anita personally should be all that worried about a photograph of Anita covered in blood unless they have DNA evidence that it is all Anita's blood...and that Anita has bled enough to endanger her life. Blood on fabric? Spreads out. A lot. And nobody is talking about massive bloodstains inside of Narcissus in Chains or how the DNA results came back showing that Anita is also the daughter of a criminal syndacate or some shit (...I ODed on CSI the other night) so I still have to assume that all this is because somebody got a shot of Anita covered in a lot of red stuff.

Fuck. For all they knew it could have been ketchup.

So one cop tells Anita that another cop will want to question her. Why? Well...this is not explained. And then Cop says the most awesome line I have read in a while:

That seemed to surprise him, because he blinked and dropped his hand. “I’ll get Count Dracula out of hock, you go talk to Dolph.”

I am now imagining somebody attempting to pawn Vlad Tepes during one of those Discovery Channel "Reality" shows. It is Fred Saberhagen's Dracula. He is not happy.

Dolph, yet another cop, tells Anita he's glad he's alive. Hey, we haven't slaughtered any commas in a while:

"Thanks, me, too." 

One day the humble comma will go the way of the passenger pidgeon. We shall all be weeping

Dolph's primary interest is in finding out who hurt Anita, and then hurting them back. This is played off as being annoying and overly paternal and a pain in the ass, all at the same time. Anita shrugs him off. Dolph then demands to see all her scars. Most of them require Anita removing her shirt, so she removes her shirt. Dolph is amazed and disgusted, and wow, so am I! I'll bet this outfit gets slapped with one harrassment suit a year.

Hey, Anita? You have a very large number of very large men who are very, very, very angry and obviously more than willing to "forget" their badges for at least a few minutes. Why not bring some of them with you? 

And then Anita accuses Dolph of being so upset only becasue he didn't get to kill Jean Claude.

  One: Jean Claude fucking raped you. Stop being responsible for his undead ass.

Two: Dolph loves you. Every cop in the entire department clearly loves you. Every single one of them just put their jobs on the line to "lose" the guy they thought had killed you. If they wanted to kill Jean Claude they would have strapped him into a suntan bed and flicked the "on" switch. They lost him because he hurt you. They clearly still believe that he hurt you, that you are protecting him because that is what battered Significant Others do, and that continuing to "lose" him is the best thing they can do for the world in general. And they are absolutely right on all counts. 

Three: You are a bitch. And not the good, awesome, Sigorney Weaver kind of bitch, either. You are everything that people hate about women.

Anita then discerns that Dolph hates Jean Claude because a woman in his life is sleeping with a vampire, and she calls him on it. LKH might be going for "ball-buster" here, but it just comes off as "heartless bitch." Sunshine, you don't go for the low blow with your father figures. You just don't.

Dolph tells Anita to get out, with trimmings. Anita walks past Dolph carefully, because literally every other man in her life would have hit her after getting that angry, so naturally Dolph, the upstanding police officer, would do that too. Welcome to Battered Wife symptom number two: Overreaction to the emotions of others. Anita, you and Bella Swan go stand in that corner over there and come back when you're in touch with your inner selves again.

Anita figures it's Dolph's wife having an affair with a vampire. She doesn't want to ask many questions. Hey, sunshine? How about not bringing that shit up in the first place.

Speaking of which, I think there's something in vampire saliva that makes you forget all concept of bounderies. Because fuck me...


And then Anita finds out they hired a bounty hunter to help them convict Jean Claude of Anita's murder.

*deep breath*

BOUNTY HUNTERS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY.

I'm better now. 

The dude's name is Orlando King. Orlando. I am now imagining Lando Calurissian in Crocodile Dundee's getup. Orlando even flirts with Anita in record time. He doesn't say "What have we here?" but it comes pretty damn close. Anita wonders if he's flirting (He called you pretty. He is) and decides she's not that pretty, she doesn't get it, and she's probably paranoid. 

...I need to develop a Mary Sue drinking game, don't I?

Anita retrieves Nathanial, who has all the lady cops drooling over his stripperific ways (Yeah. No.) and heads off to get Jean Claude.

You know, I'll bet every cop in that department has a packet of domestic abuse cards with Anita's name on it, and none of them have the guts to do it. They're not slipping Nathaniel their number because they wanna sleep with him, 'Nita. They're trying to get you into some form of halfway decent therapy. 

And then we get "Fuck you" retcon number ninty nine. Anita wraps herself around Jean Claude, exactly the way battered women snuzzle their abusers, and Cop One says this: 

“I’ve never seen you be that  .  .  . soft with anyone before.” It startled me. 

“You’ve seen me kiss Richard before.”

 He nodded. “That was lust. This is  .  .  .” He shook his head, glancing up at Jean-Claude, then back to me. “He makes you feel safe.”

     
I will not make this review any longer by pointing out the ten zillion reasons why this is bullshit. I will just point out that, one, Jean Claude mind-raped Anita less than twelve hours ago, and two, that contradicts every character interaction in the last nine books so heard I think the book just strained something. 

And then the characters talk about how Anita's experiances have "mellowed" her. 

    There is an attempt at humor, it doesn't work, and the chapter ends with everybody heading home.

There are sixty-five chapters in this book. And an epilogue.

This really is going to suck, isn't it?

Next chapter: I just read ahead a few pages, and I am going to have a fucking meltdown. You will be here to watch it. This might just be worse than Captive of Gor.

Narcissus in Chains--chapter 11

Let's be up front about this: This is chapter is about a terrible thing. It's awful. You might want to look away now. I do not know if I can make it entertaining. I will try.

Anita was on the phone last chapter while everyone else clears out. She hangs up, and now  she's alone in the shower with Micah, the naked wereleopard dude she woke up with. He begins saying things about how nice she is, and how he's never felt this way with another woman. Okay. He says Nimir-Ra, but the world's most overused line is still the world's most overused line. And then Anita sees the big mark she made from when Jean Claude used her to feed.

Again: that was rape. Metaphysical and mental, but she was still forced to do something she would not normally do, and the dude doing the forcing did not ask her permission, nor did he bother to stick around and make sure he had not damaged her. Which he did do. You don't huddle in the shower, whimpering, just because you got sweaty during the metaphysical orgy.

Anita apologizes for making the bite. Micah says don't worry, "It's a love bite".

No one, and I mean no one has brought up the concept of Anita wanting to have the sexy-sexy with anybody in the room. PERIOD. Micah is the  first to broach the subject. He says that he enjoyed what they did, and that they could do great things for each other's pack together. And Anita is not saying anything. Not. One. Word.

This is out of character for normal, "healthy" Anita.

Finally she says "Let's take it slow." If you have never dated before, this is girl for "I do not want to have sex with you." Most guys who are interested in having a relationship with a woman read this correctly and back off.

Micah does not.

Anita watches him soap up.

The scariest thing about this chapter is how Laurell is writing it. Laurel wants Anita and Micah to get it down, and get it down hard. In the future books they are an item. One of several. So this scene should be all sunshine and roses and porn music. Only it is not. Anita is not screaming, scratching and shooting her gun, but she is shut down emotionally. Completely. And Micah will not shut up. Anita goes to the door and Micah dangles the bait of "We'll help you when you go face down Richard", which is something Anita badly needs, so she doesn't leave.

“Anita,” he said. I stopped in the doorway, but this time I didn’t turn around.

“What?” I sounded grumpy.

“It’s alright to be attracted to me. You can’t help yourself.” 

That made me laugh, a good normal laugh. “Oh, you don’t have a high opinion of yourself, do you?” But I stayed facing away from him.

Yeah. We're still not in safe territory. See, I remember all of this. This is how it went down, exactly. Only it was a truck and not a shower, and it stopped before it went too far. Everything about this, her physical reactions, his continued talking-talking-talking, is very very very NOT OKAY.

And then this happens:

“No,” I said, my voice strangled, but I repeated it. “No.”

 He stepped into me, pressing the slick hardness of him against my lower hand and arm. He tried to uncurl my fingers from the towel, and I held on for dear life. “Touch me, Anita, cup me in your hands.” 

“No.”

This is the moment when everything should have stopped. A sane, contientious human being worth sleeping with should have shut down here. For Christ's Sake, the woman was weeping on the bathroom floor the last time they got it on. Her saying "NO" should have been all the clue he needed. Does he stop? No.

And then Laurell tries to have Anita's own body give permission when her mouth is clearly screaming NO. Problem is...

I shivered and wanted to step back, but it was like I was frozen in place. I couldn’t move.

That's not permission. That's freaking shutting down. I read somewhere (I think it was Reasoning with Vampires) that your emotions can shut down kind of like an opossum playing dead, that it's a protective mechanism within your own body to keep you alive. I do not know if it is a real thing. I do know that that passage, up there? Was exactly how I felt.

Then Anita does start to want it. She contacts Jean Claude telepathically, and he tells her that she now has his primary power, the ability to feed off of sex the way he feeds off of blood. This, too, happened without Anita's permission, but it's all okay because he didn't know it would happen to her. This power is what's making Anita want to sex up Micah. So she tells him stop. he says "I know you want me."

This happens:

“Please, Micah, I’m not on birth control.” A clear thought at last.

 He bit softly at the back of my neck. “I had myself fixed two years ago. You’re safe with me, Anita.”

Then stop trying to have sex with her. She tells him no again and he hits some erogenous zone that makes Anita whimper. See, she's experiancing pleasure. That must mean she wants it.

I'm going to leave this here. Otherwise, we'll be focusing on this part of this terrible, terrible scene all night long.


And after hitting something that made Anita feel pleasure, even though she never once said okay, Micah...yeah. I can't even write it. I'm not quoting it, either. You can't make me. The one part I will say is, soap is involved.

Anita does not respond to him at all. Even the book says this is out of character. Meanwhile, Micah is bumping her cervix. It says so in the text. 

And then her brand new power kicks in and she starts feeding off the lust...but even the text says she doesn't want sex. 

And then she starts to enjoy it and everything is okay again...until after Anita orgasms and turns back into a sobbing, whimpering mess on the bathroom floor.

Excuse me for a moment. I need to vent.

And the truly scary part? This is the sanitized version. This is the version where LKH went back and made this scene less rapey. I knew that this scene existed, but I thought it was the scene in the bedroom before Anita crashed in the shower, which was what I had to check up on a couple days ago. I read about the so-called "rape scene" and thought "Dang, I don't remember any actual penetration in the bedroom, I guess she really did tone it down"

It's sad when a female writer makes John Norman look good.